The destruction of a family who just want Sharon back

"I don’t want to just put ‘Here Lies ...’ Sharon deserves more than that but what on earth do you put?" he asks.

"That’s the difficult thing, thinking what to say. You end up walking round the cemetery reading other headstones. The majority have: 'Here lies so-and-so, born so-and-so, died so-and-so.' I just want something more fitting for Sharon - but what?"

It’s more than a year now since PC Sharon Beshenivsky, the 38-year old mother of three children and two stepchildren, was shot dead by armed robbers on November 18 - the afternoon of her daughter Lydia’s fourth birthday party.

Instead of lighting the candles on his daughter’s cake, Paul had the dreadful task of explaining to her and her brothers Samuel, 13, and Paul, eight, that Mummy would never be coming home.

He said "some bad men" had put her in heaven. The younger children still ask why.

Yesterday, the four "bad" men; Yusaf Jama, Mussaker Shah, Raza Aslam and Hasson and Faisal Rassaq, were found guilty of Sharon’s shocking murder.

But gang leader Mustaf Jama continues to escape justice in his native Somalia where he fled following the shooting - the very place the Home Office ruled was "too dangerous" to deport him to after he finished a fifth prison term in the UK.

Today, Paul is understandably angered by a legal system that put the human rights of a violent criminal before those of his wife and children.

"Someone like him [Mustaf] shouldn’t have human rights. He’s not humane himself," he says. "I find it absolutely disgusting that a criminal who acts like an animal is allowed human rights. What about my kids, my family, my wife? Don’t children have the right to have a mother?

"The legal system in this country backs the criminal up because of all these do-gooders, but they don’t have to live with the repercussions.

"Telling my kids that their mum wasn’t coming back was the most terrible thing I’ve ever had to do. Lydia kept asking why the bad men put mummy in the sky. Now she asks what it feels like to die. I’d like the do-gooders who believe in these people's human rights to come and explain that to my daughter."

The past year has been a dreadful time of grief, despair and loneliness for Paul. Lydia’s birthday, the anniversary of Sharon’s death, was particularly hard.

"We had a party for Lydia, but I spent half the time outside because I was welling up. Although everyone was there for Lydia, we all had the same thought in mind and that was Sharon’s death. We just kept looking at each other. You could just see it.

"The last thing Sharon said to me that morning was: 'Make sure you’re home early.'

"I made a point of being home at lunchtime and all I remember is sitting here waiting for her, thinking: 'Where the hell is she? Lydia wants to light her cake.'

"That’s what’s in my head - the hour when she should have been home and wasn’t. The cake was on that table there." Paul points to a low coffee table. "And I was sat here on this sofa waiting."

I first met this family shortly after Sharon’s murder. Paul was absolutely devastated. He couldn’t stop sobbing, couldn’t sleep. The children simply did not understand. They were not alone in failing to comprehend a death so sudden and so shocking.

"Lydia picked out a shooting star the other day and followed it through the sky to our house," says Paul. "She said it was Mummy.

"She’s become really clingy in the past year. She thinks if she’s not with you you’re not going to come back. If you’re nipping out anywhere she’s got to go with you. She throws a wobbly if she can’t."

I met Paul, a landscape gardener, at the family’s rambling home high on the moors above Halifax, West Yorkshire.

The Beshenivskys had the sort of traditional marriage where Paul worked all hours to provide for his family while Sharon cared for the children with the help of an au pair when she worked her police shifts.

This house was the realisation of a dream they set out to achieve when they married five years ago. They moved in just four months before Sharon’s murder.

There were plans to build an extension and a barn in the four-acre grounds. Today, the barn is finished, but Paul says his heart is no longer in it.

"I don’t know if I want to stay here," he says. "I love the place but it was more Sharon’s dream than mine. When I was building the barn I thought: 'Am I doing this for the right reasons?' Now I’ve got to the point where I don’t want to do it anymore.

"I don’t want to work from 7am to 10pm seven days a week. The goal was always to make money to enjoy an early retirement with Sharon, but I haven’t got that goal anymore."

Recently, Paul has started a relationship with Michelle Sherbourne, 36, a single mother with two children Jade, 17, and Jack, 12, who was helping him look after the children.

She’s a lovely, warm woman who doles out discipline and cuddles in equal measure. But, she’s not the children’s mother and this is where Paul’s despair lies.

He says he didn’t have a clue how much his wife did every day - until her death.

"When Sharon died I was upset, but it wasn’t until six months later that I began to comprehend the extent of what we’d lost. Every day I’d discover something else she did - like all the letters from school saying there’s this collection or that play. Sharon used to sort all of that.

"Everytime something comes up you’re reminded of what’s been taken away from you. That’s what makes me angry.

"These people haven’t just taken Sharon away from me, they’ve taken away everything a mother does for her children. My kids won’t have their noses wiped by her, they won’t be consoled by her. I didn't even know what their favourite food was or what time to put them to bed because I was never there.

"I was always the disciplinarian, but they always had Sharon to run to. Now there’s nobody.

They just run off and sob in a corner, crying: 'I want my mummy. I want my mummy.' I have to say: 'You can’t, you can’t have her.' Then they ask: "Why won’t she see me?" It just goes on and on."

Indeed. Paul remains deeply affected by the loss of his wife. He says that his brain is like cabbage and that he can’t remember what happened yesterday.

In the first few months following Sharon’s murder he doused his grief in whisky and managed only to deal with the dreadful detail of sudden death. There was Christmas to be got through and the funeral on January 11.

"The hardest part was not being able to see Sharon on the day of the funeral," he says. "The coroner needed to do more and more stuff with her, so we had to wait and wait to bury her. I last saw her in December before they put her on ice. That was hard."

"I sat with her for half-an-hour, held her hand and told her that I missed her and I loved her.

"So many other people loved her too. On the day of the funeral everywhere you looked on the way to the cathedral someone was in tears. For me, putting her coffin in the ground was one of the toughest things I’ve had to watch.

"It destroys me now when I go to the grave, particularly when I take the kids. They ask so many questions: 'Why is she here? Why are we putting flowers down?'

"One minute you’re saying she’s in the sky and the next you’re visiting her grave. Giving them the answers is difficult."

Sharon should have been celebrating her 39th birthday three days after she was buried.

Such was Paul’s distress he completely forgot.

"Sharon always had to remind me about birthdays and things so I always took it for granted that I’d get told. When I realised I’d forgotten I started falling apart. I was in pieces for most of the first few months and hitting the whisky hard.

"With the days being so short at this time of year the evenings seem so long. When you’re sat there on your own and everyone’s gone to bed it’s very hard. You end up pacing. Motivation was very hard. I was so used to being told to do something by Sharon.

"After she’d gone I’d look round and think: 'There’s that and that to do.' I’d make a list and tell myself I’d go through it, but then I couldn’t be bothered.

"I was getting through the days with the kids but nothing was running smoothly. Sometimes, I’d sit down and think: 'I can’t cope with this anymore.' I couldn’t see the point to life.

"Then I thought: 'Come on Paul, get your act together.' I had to for the kids."

Paul stopped drinking whisky and began to work on the barn. Sharon had been taking riding lessons before her death and the barn had been one of her dreams. He also set about sorting out her belongings.

"I sat there looking at her clothes for two or three months after the funeral. Then, I just got up one day and thought: 'I’m going to have to deal with this.'

"I’d pull out a certain dress that I’d see her in and the emotion of it all would overwhelm me. I’d have to leave it for a day or so and then go back to it.

"I’ve kept all her jewellery for Lydia and given her some of the dress jewellery to play with. The rest I’ve boxed up for when she's older which I think is what Sharon would have liked. I keep her watch and a pair of earrings in my top drawer to look at now and then.

"The earrings were the first thing I ever bought her. A picture of her in those earrings is what sticks in my mind more than anything."

Paul continued working upon Sharon’s barn for much of the spring and early summer. He returned to his landscaping business too, but continued to worry about the children.

Samuel, a son from Sharon’s earlier marriage, was spending more and more time in his room refusing to speak about his mother while little Paul began to withdraw from the other children at school.

"Samuel’s never shown one drop of emotion. He’s not cried once since the day Sharon died," says Paul.

"Instead he became argumentative at school and with his father and me. He’d insist black was white. It was as if he wanted an argument. When you confronted him over his mother he’d be like: 'I’m not bothered'.

"He started staying up late and comfort-eating in his room. We’d find sweet wrappers under the bed. He’s seeing this counsellor who’s been trying to talk to him about his loss, but no matter what you say to him, he won’t show any emotion.

"He’s very deep. He’s staying with his father nearby for now. You know how it is at that age - the grass is always greener. I’d like him to come home. We all would.

"The whole time, when anything happens with the kids, you think: 'I wish Sharon was here to sort it out.' Because I’ve never had to do it, I’m learning like you wouldn’t believe.

"On Lydia’s first day at school, I was the only bloke sat there with all these women.

"Sharon would have been over the moon that day, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ll never forget that day. Lydia was sat next to me with her hair in ponytails. She was all excited and the teacher kept putting questions to me, things like: 'How far is she with her writing and her drawing? What things does she like? What about school dinners?'

"I didn’t know. She was asking the wrong person. She should have been asking the au pair who plays with her every day, sorts her out, draws with her."

That day made a fundamental impression upon Paul who resolved to work fewer hours to spend more time with his children.

"I wasn’t used to playing with them because I’d come home from work and be knackered. That had always been left to Sharon.

"But you get to thinking about what the kids are missing out on not having their mum and what you’ve missed out on not sitting down and playing with them. I spend more time with them now though."

For much of this interview, Paul has been close to tears, but he is smiling when he tells me about this decision. It is one of the positive things to have come out of a dreadful year.

His relationship with Michelle is positive too.

Paul says: "Michelle had been living in Australia and was staying with a friend when she came back to this country. The old au pair was going home and I couldn’t get a new one because as soon as they heard you were a single man they didn’t want to know.

"Michelle agreed to help me with the kids. She’d never heard about Sharon’s murder or read about it and that’s what made the difference. She wasn’t feeling sorry for me.

"Pity is hard. People mean well, but you don’t want pity. If someone pities you, you start to feel sorry for yourself. Michelle and I spent a lot of time talking and slowly things progressed.

"It’s not as if either of us went out looking for it. Anyway, how long do you wait? It should be Sharon here with the kids but it's not. I know Sharon wouldn’t have wanted me to feel guilty about this. She’d have said: 'Get on with it'.

"That’s what I’ve tried to do - get on with life. The sorrow doesn’t go away but, at the end of the day, you want to be able to laugh.

"Sharon loved to have a laugh and that’s what makes me feel good, remembering her laughing. For her - for us - that was the whole point of living."